FAQ – Software

Software

SolidWorks 2017-18 is currently available for student and department installations. The version of SolidWorks available is tied to the academic calendar and new versions are typically made available to us during summer semester. After testing, we upgrade the labs in preparation for fall semester.

There are three editions of SolidWorks available and each is intended for a specific use:

The Student Engineering Kit is the full version that matches the version installed in our labs feature for feature, however its license allows it to be installed on student laptops or home computers and activates directly with SolidWorks over the internet. The activation is valid for 1 year, at which point you will need to install the new version for the new academic year to continue using SolidWorks. Most students will want to install this edition of SolidWorks.

The Education Edition is intended to be installed on College of Engineering department desktops. It requires access to CADE’s network license server in order to run. So, while it can be installed on home computers, doing so requires either an active connection to the Campus VPN, or a monthly license borrowing procedure in order for the licensing to work properly. This is typically NOT the edition you want if you are installing SolidWorks on a laptop or home computer.

*** THIS SOFTWARE IS ONLY PROVIDED TO STUDENTS IN THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH. ***

Installation instructions for all three editions can be obtained by accessing the Solidworks folder in CADE’s U.Box repository.
Log in with your CIS credentials (UNID & CIS/UMail password). If you’ve not created your U.Box account, do so first.

Note: Solidworks is a MS Windows-only program and will NOT run on (Mac) OS X or Linux distros. One could, however, use a Windows virtual machine or emulator to run it (VirtualBox, VMWare Player/Fusion, Parallels, CrossOver, VirtaulPC, etc.)

1) A git repository can be created using the ‘git init MY_REPO’ command.
This will create and initialize a simple git repository called ‘MY_REPO’ in whatever directory you are currently in.

2) If this is going to be a shared git repository, it is highly recommended to initialize using the ‘- -bare’ flag.
Example: ‘git init –bare MY_REPO’
This will create and initialize a simple git repository that does not include a working copy.

3) By default, git uses simple UNIX permissions for file management. This means that you can share access to the git repository based on the group in which the files belong to.

4) The git repository can be checked out via SSH from any lab1 or lab2 machine.
Example: ‘git clone ssh://USERNAME@lab[1-2]-[1-40].eng.utah.edu/path/to/repo’

5) If using the bare flag (which is highly recommended), the owner of the git repository should still check out their own working copy, so as to not overwrite other peoples’ changes.

If you haven’t already done so, after reading the description and deciding which license applies to your situation, you’ll need to purchase Matlab from OSL here: http://software.utah.edu/news/mathworks.php (click the ‘Shop For Software’ button)

For students and single-machine installs, you should see the following link on your receipt or e-mail from software@utah.edu describing the process to download and install Matlab: Instructions for Single User Licenses

You can connect to this share by opening My Computer and entering the above share name in the address bar. If prompted for credentials, use your CADE Lab username (USERS\<username>) and Windows password.

Once connected to the network share, navigate to the “bin” folder for the software package you want and run the “exe” file from that folder. Alternatively you can copy the entire “bin” folder to your computer and run the ThinApp locally.

Most typical Windows applications save personalized settings for each user in the user’s profile. Since the application packaged in a ThinApp never actually gets installed on your computer the ThinApp doesn’t store user settings in the same way as a normal application. Instead, ThinApp uses what is called a sandbox. The sandbox is a specific folder in your user profile, and each ThinApp you run saves its own settings in the sandbox. The default location for the sandbox is “%APPDATA%\Thinstall\”.

If something stops working for a specific ThinApp, you can typically clear the sandbox for that ThinApp and it should start working again.

Before clearing the sandbox make sure you are not currently running the ThinApp in question. Next open My Computer and enter “%APPDATA%\Thinstall\” in the address bar. You should see a separate directory here for each ThinApp you have run. Simply delete the directory for the ThinApp that is having trouble and then restart the ThinApp.

If you are running out of space when simulating your project or intend to run something large, please put the simulation directory under /var/tmp/ /scratch/tmp.

To do so, in the Analog enviroment Window, you need to select Setup… :: Simulator/Directory/Host, then choose the spectreS simulator, and set the project directory as /scratch/tmp/USERNAME/ (where ‘USERNAME’ is your username- this is just for identifying your own simulation and not overpopulating or overwriting others files in /scratch/tmp). Remember to make copies of important input signal files and the spectreFinal in your home directory, because whatever in the ‘/scratch/tmp’ dir WILL be deleted each semester or if the file system dies. Keep in mind we don’t do backups on /scratch/tmp.

If you use the default tcsh shell you should be all set (run ‘usermodify’ to verify). To use L-Edit with a shell other than tcsh you need to add some variables to your shell’s .rc file (for bash: ~/.bashrc or zsh: ~/.zshrc). Using your favorite text editor (vim, gedit or even emacs), open up the file and add the following:

Cadence locks files so that files are not edited by two independent copies of Cadence. However, sometimes lock files are not correctly removed. In this case you may get a message like “Couldn’t get a write lock for…”. If you are sure that your files are not opened on another computer using Cadence you can use the command:
find ~/ -name “*.cdslck” -exec rm {} \;
to find and remove the offending lock files.

Software on any given lab machine (or compute or Terminal server, virtual machine, etc.) may be different based on the OS or the intended purpose of the lab. Not all software runs on all OS’s, and not all labs need the same software.

We update versions of the software from time to time, and may add or remove software based upon a licensing issue, compatibility with other software or hardware, a request from a professor, etc.

For these, and other reasons, we have found keeping an updated list of all lab software too cumbersome and counter-productive. If you have a question about a particular software or package availability, check the machine you’re using, connect remotely, or contact us.

To protect against data loss, the ANSYS program employs a file-locking mechanism. File locking helps to prevent you or another user from inadvertently opening a new job with the same name and in the same working directory as a currently running job.

When you open a job (jobname) from a given working directory, ANSYS creates a corresponding lock file called jobname.lock in that directory. The lock file exists for as long as your job is running. If you or someone else attempts to open another job of the same name (and in the same directory) as your currently running job, ANSYS detects the existence of the lock file and does not open the new job. In interactive mode, ANSYS displays a dialog indicating that the file is locked, offering the option to override the lock. In batch mode, the program exits, leaving the lock file intact.

A txt file is a text file and can be viewed using any text editor: vim, emacs, pico, nano, etc. from the Linux machines. These also work on the Mac’s, as does TextEditor.app. On Windows, try the Notepad.

There are also handfuls of document editors that run as GUI’s: TextEditor.app, MS Word, OpenOffice.org – Writer, etc.

Due to the large number of programs (387 at last count) and features they offer, it would take more time than we are willing to put into it to list everything. Many programs have: pulldown Help menus, man pages (‘man pine’ would give you the man page on pine) and very helpfull websites.

If your question can still not be answered or the answer you found does not work, don’t hesitate to ask us.

We will add links below to software tutorials and usage as we find/get a chance to make them.

VMware ThinApp is an application virtualization solution. A ThinApp is an application that has been packaged into a self-contained windows executable file which can be run from any Windows computer without the need to install the application on that computer. This means the ThinApp can be run from virtually any filesystem, whether it is a local hard drive, a network share, or a USB flash drive and no installation is required.

There are a few limitations. First, not all software is able to be packaged into a ThinApp for various reasons. Second, any software that utilizes a network license will still require access to our license server either through our local network or via Campus VPN connection. Third, there are sometimes compatibility issues with a ThinApp and a particular version of Windows, so, for example, while a certain ThinApp may run fine on Windows 7 it may have problems running on Windows 10, or vice versa.

SolidWorks 2017-18 is currently available for student and department installations. The version of SolidWorks available is tied to the academic calendar and new versions are typically made available to us during summer semester. After testing, we upgrade the labs in preparation for fall semester.

There are three editions of SolidWorks available and each is intended for a specific use:

The Student Engineering Kit is the full version that matches the version installed in our labs feature for feature, however its license allows it to be installed on student laptops or home computers and activates directly with SolidWorks over the internet. The activation is valid for 1 year, at which point you will need to install the new version for the new academic year to continue using SolidWorks. Most students will want to install this edition of SolidWorks.

The Education Edition is intended to be installed on College of Engineering department desktops. It requires access to CADE’s network license server in order to run. So, while it can be installed on home computers, doing so requires either an active connection to CADE’s VPN, or a monthly license borrowing procedure in order for the licensing to work properly. This is typically NOT the edition you want if you are installing SolidWorks on a laptop or home computer.

*** THIS SOFTWARE IS ONLY PROVIDED TO STUDENTS IN THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH. ***

Installation instructions for all three editions can be obtained by accessing the Solidworks folder in CADE’s U.Box repository.
Log in with your CIS credentials (UNID & CIS/UMail password). If you’ve not created your U.Box account, do so first.

Note: Solidworks is a MS Windows-only program and will NOT run on (Mac) OS X or Linux distros. One could, however, use a Windows virtual machine or emulator to run it (VirtualBox, VMWare Player/Fusion, Parallels, CrossOver, VirtaulPC, etc.)

When logged in to a Linux lab machine or compute server, you may get the following error when opening Firefox:“Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system.”

This may occur even though no evidence of Firefox running can be found.
To remedy this, open a Terminal and run the command: foxlock

It’s a script we wrote that will remove the necessary files from your .mozilla folder and allow you to open Firefox once again.

Indeed – simply download and install the appropriate mobile device application and then execute the commands in the Matlab application (R2012a+), from a lab machine, or any machine with a licensed copy of Matlab.

You will need MATLAB Connector (available from MathWorks, http://www.mathworks.com/mobile/) on your machine/device. Upon running the install_connector command, you’ll be prompted to accept the license agreement, and then receive an error message you can safely ignore:Error using install_connector>doinstall (line 100)

Error: You do not have write permission to the MATLAB Installation folder
(/usr/local/apps/matlab/matlab14b).
The MATLAB Connector Installer cannot proceed.

Error in install_connector (line 54)
doinstall

Run the ‘connector on’ command and continue as normal.

See Matlab’s site for full instructions and more information, including a link to download the mobile app.